First Truly Sporting Machine

‘The V7 Sport had been too expensive to sell in a big number, costing far more than Kawasaki’s powerful new Z1 four in most markets that year, but it had established Guzzi as a manufacturer of high-class sporting superbikes’

- Roland Brown

THIS IS GETTING A bit hectic. Ahead of me is the bright red shape of an Alfa Romeo saloon car, being driven at considerable speed down a winding country road. Behind it, I am gunning the Guzzi’s V-twin engine for all it’s worth, then squeezing the brake lever hard and hurling the bike through the bends in an attempt to keep up. And on every straight I’m lifting my left hand off the bars to prevent my loose-fitting goggles from slipping off altogether.

My increasingly desperate attempts to keep up with the Alfa are not designed just to prove that two-wheeled Italian vehicles are faster than four-wheeled ones, even when ridden one-handed and watery-eyed. Quite simply, the driver is my photographer, he knows where he’s going and I don’t — so I’m very keen not to lose him. Besides, sometimes it’s nice to have an incentive to ride hard...

Especially when you are riding a bike as nice and as rapid as this immaculately restored Guzzi V7 Sport, which must be just about the best early-1970s machine I could have chosen for the chase. The Sport fully deserved its name, as this bike was the first truly sporting machine to be built using Mandello del Lario firm’s transverse V-twin engine. As such, this is the bike from which all subsequent sporting Guzzis, from the 750 S3 and first Le Mans to the current Daytona and 1100 Sport, have descended.

The V7 Sport was introduced in 1971, after Guzzi engineer Lino Tonti had produced a new frame to house the firm’s 90-degree transverse V-twin motor. Even Guzzi fans have to grin when recalling that the engine was originally designed in the late 1950s to power the 3x3, a tractor-like device produced for the Italian ministry of defence. Guzzi, looking for a replacement for its ageing Falcone flat-single, then uprated the shaft-drive V-twin to power police bikes and the 703-cc V7 tourer of 1967.